O Tempora, O Moran !

By LORD CHANDOS

CRD MORAN'S Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940-1965* is a massive volume: it weighs nearly three and a half pounds, and imposes some strain on the reader's hands and wrists: it extends to 800 pages, and imposes an even greater strain on his attention.

Those who read Lord Moran's The Anatomy of Courage will remember his style as easy, fluent and scholarly: it remains so. Unfortunately, however, his powers of selecting his material have declined. Why is this? He himself provides the excuse for his own prolixity. In a chapter headed `A Preview of Old Age,' he writes of the Prime Minister: 'His books before the war were im- mensely readable, but there was now a danger that . . . some of his text might be indigestible.' And in a conversation with the Poet Laureate, Masefield says: 'The first thing to go in this exhaustion is the power of selection.'

Doctors are rightly slow to recommend sur- gery to a patient: they should not apply the same caution to their memoirs. Some parts of this book should have been cut out because they are tedious or repetitive, some parts because they offend against professional etiquette or the ordinary canons of good taste or good manners, and some parts because they are inaccurate,f or subjective, or tendentious. What is left may not always be of historical significance, but it will, here and there, beguile posterity and may even add a little to knowledge.

The inherent difficulties which faced the author should be remembered. His closest touch with events was when he was travelling with the Prime Minister on one of his frequent journeys: but at home, particularly during the war, his attendances upon him were intermittent, and he clearly could not be in the confidence of the Cabinet, the Foreign Office, or the War Office. This has not prevented him from expressing opinions on military and political subjects which were not gleaned from the Prime Minister's table, but from his own mind, and he avows to being unversed in the arts of war or politics.

When, for instance, with hardly a saving clause, he dismisses Mr Churchill's leadership of the Opposition as a failure due to his health, he passes an ex cathedra judgment which few if any of Mr Churchill's friends or colleagues at that time would have endorsed. In 1945 the Labour party was returned with a majority of 146. Under Mr Churchill's infirm and ineffective leadership this had been whittled down by 1950

to a mere five. It seems, therefore. that either the Labour government was of an ineptitude which its worst enemies would not have ascribed to it, or that those around Mr Churchill were supermen, which they would not claim to be.

Again, the author pronounces that the discord, or at least the lack of the former harmony, with President Roosevelt was due to Mr Churchill's exhaustion and ill-health. Strangely, the ailing President, who loved Winston, suddenly became

jealous of his fame: there- was also a clash over policy. These were the causes of the rift, not the Prime Minister's health: as Mr Colville has said, it was not Churchill but Roosevelt who was dying. Lastly, it is not history but a wrong opinion which ascribes the Prime Minister's opposition to a landing in France as early as 1943 to a fear of casualties. 1 have every reason to know that three things deterred the Prime Minister at that time. First. that the Germans were too strong: they had first to be bled elsewhere. Secondly, that the difficulties of amphibious operations across the Channel—the great rise and fall in the tides and the treacherous weather, which much later nearly wrecked the landings --had been insufficiently studied. And lastly, that the build-up after the landing had not been studied at all by the Americans. These views were also strongly held and expressed by Alanbrooke, and I was present at some of the meetings with General Marshall and Harry Hopkins at which they were ventilated.

These criticisms must, however, be put in per- spective. The book is, after all, the record, which cannot be denied to the author. of assiduous devotion to his patient, and of success in pre- serving him to the British nation. The reader must therefore set aside some of his irritation when he feels that a comment is jaundiced or ill- informed, or that only a wayward and fitful light is cast upon the scene, so that some of the book barely escapes the criticism of gossip, or self- importance. He must wait patiently for those pages of discernment and eloquence which throw some important events into relief.

There are also one or two amusing passages which may not be of historical significance, but which add to our knowledge, our memory and our affection for his famous patient.

After his stroke. Sir Winston (page 425) quoted from memory 350 lines from King -Robert of Sicily, by Longfellow, a poet to whom he was much addicted, and though he had not read it for fifty years. made only minor mistakes.

Again: Winston has burnt his hand; Sir Thomas Dunhill is dressing it.

WSC: `The bandage must not come below that. Give me the scissors.'

Moran, intervening: 'You ought not to speak to the man at the wheel.'

WSC: 'I'm the bloody wheel,' and the PM gave me a great grin.

For all the size of the canvas, the portrait is strangely incomplete, and does not seem to be a likeness. The reason is not far to seek : it is because the doctor did not see his patient in action, but mostly in unguarded moments of ill-

health. If no man is likely to be a hero to his valet, it is doubly true that he cannot be so to

his doctor, and this becomes dangerous when the doctor wields the pen with hardly less skill than he wields the stethoscope.

The impression left upon the reader is dis- torted. The last chapter. in a discursive way, rubs

out some of the lines of the previous portrait,

and does some justice to that magnanimity, in the classical sense of the word, which was one of Mr Churchill's virtues. Little in the book, his alleged self-centredness, disregard of other people, lack of knowledge of men, accounts for the abiding love and loyalty which he inspired in his family, his friends, his political colleagues and lieutenants. It is not true that he rode rough- shod over everyone's opinion, never understood the British, and was generally intractable and ill-tempered.

The author permits himself some acid com- ments, which are difficult to forgive, though they are mere speculation. Thus, the subject is the Prime Minister's broadcast on VE-Day: 'A Peer next to me thought it was strange that there was no allusion in the speech to God. There was, however, no doubt in Winston's mind to whom the credit was due.' Admittedly the words are ambiguous, but in their context they may be safely rated as a sneer, and not as a testimonial that Mr Churchill saw the hand of God in victory.

It should. however, be confessed that the very prolixity of the narrative, especially after the Prime Minister's stroke, in all its repeated and remorseless detail, builds up our sympathy and our admiration for his courage and his tenacity of purpose in the causes which he be- lieved he could still bring home.

Lord Moran also gives us unconsciously some portrait of himself. He is at pains to underline on almost every page his intimacy with his great patient: but the constant, the almost invariable use of own Christian name in the dialogue, 'Charles' this and 'Charles' that, has the opposite effect on the reader, and gives the impression that this intimacy is overemphasised. The Prime Minister was sparing in the use of Christian names, and when he is made to say `Charles' six times in a page and a half, something is out of perspective.

There are other phrases and words which seem completely out of character, and which I find difficult to believe were ever used.

Finally, it must be said that the wholesale re- porting of private conversations trangresses the canons of good manners. For instance, Sir Anthony Eden, Lord Salisbury, Mr Christopher Soames and Lord Normanbrook are extensively quoted. Their permission has not been asked. If this age-long custom is to be set aside, the private life of public men will become intolerable, and only Trappists will hold high office of state with equanimity.

It is a pity that reticence is no longer counted amongst the modern virtues. That a

doctor should disclose so many medical details

would seem to a layman to violate the tradition of one of the noblest professions. Lord Moran does not apparently subscribe to the widely-held opinion that the secrets of the sick room should be treated with respect, and should be almost as closely guarded as those of the confessional.

In our age silence is indeed no longer golden: it is sad that the reverse is true, and as I closed the book I could not help exclaiming, '0 ten:para. 0 Moran!'

* Constable, 63s.

t Vide Lord Brain's letter in The Times on May 10.